Kutai Kartanegara to kicks off historical local polls
Kutai Kartanegara to kicks off historical local polls
Kutai Kartanegara regency, in East Kalimantan, will be the first regency in dizzying series of local direct elections across the country -- the first ever -- when the polls open on Wednesday. Kahar Al Bahri, the coordinator of Pokja 30 election monitoring group, talked to The Jakarta Post's A'an Suryana and Rusman on Monday in Samarinda, on the organization's preparations to monitor the election. The local General Elections Commission accredited the organization to observe the elections in the resource-rich regency. The following is the excerpt of the conversation.
Question: How do you prepare for your election monitoring work?
Answer: The preparations have been going on for a month. First, we gathered data from the Kutai Kartanegara General Elections Commission (KPU), including the number of voters, number of polling booths and where they are located. Then, we prepared a team of people to do the task of election monitoring. A total of 224 election observers, mostly university students, have been recruited and trained, and some of them have already been deployed to remote areas in Kutai Kartanegara a few days ago.
The last batch will be deployed to the downtown area on June 1, when the election takes place. The volunteers will observe the election in 200 out of a total of 1,300 polling stations in 18 districts in Kutai Kartanegara regency.
Did you find any problems during the preparations?
We haven't seen many problems so far. In terms of funding, we have been given Rp 223 million (approximately US$23,000) by public donations and the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute (NDI). That will be enough to support us in monitoring the election. We are also ready in terms of manpower. A good number of us have been well-trained and had experience before in other elections.
The only problem we've found so far was that some areas in the regency have suffered from recent flooding and to date, it is still uncertain whether elections can be held in those areas. We also found data errors by KPU. The KPU stated in its data that each district would have 10 polling stations, but when we really checked it, the districts actually just had 8 each. This inaccuracy has affected us in terms of volunteer deployment planning.
What is your plan in overseeing elections?
We are preparing to do an exit poll and voter attitude survey. The volunteers will record what is happening during the election, including voting fraud, and they will later record the number of votes. They report the findings to us, in order to allow us to recapitulate the total votes in the regency election. The votes are merely a sampling as we only record votes in 200 out of total over 1,300 polling stations, but the sample should be reliable as it will be taken in over 15 percent of polling stations throughout the regency.
The quick count is the easiest, cheap and the most accurate way to predict the election outcome. We will also conduct a voter attitude survey through which the election outcome can be explained. We will interview 10 voters in each polling station so that in total we will obtain 2,000 samples.
Through the voter attitude survey, we will be able to find out why people voted for a particular candidate and not another as well as what voter expectations are from each candidate. Through this method, we will even be able to find out whether the voters made their choice based on bribes or vote buying.
The voter attitude survey will be useful to identify whether voting fraud has taken place and what the people's reason were in voting for each candidate. We are planning to announce the quick count outcome on June 2, or a day after the election takes place, and a day later, we will announce the results of the voter attitude survey, to see whether the election was held in a fair and just manner.
Do you see any potential problems during the elections?
Based on our experience during the two presidential elections last year, telecommunications were the major problem. The volunteers could not send a cellular phone text message to us, in particular from those polling stations where cellular coverage was weak or non-existent, such as areas like Kembang Janggut district. In other areas, not only was there no cellular coverage, but there were no fixed-line phones either.
We hope that the cellular system has reached these areas this time so that we will not have problems in communicating the outcomes. Another problem is that the level of political education is still low in the regency. During the presidential election last year, we did not see any problems, but there is still a potential problem that people will not accept their favorite candidates being defeated in the elections. The politicians have to help educate the public and urge them to accept whatever the outcome, in order to avoid possible bloodshed.